As GoPro Unveils Smaller Camera, CEO Talks Of Finding New Customers, Drones And Not Fearing Apple

Nicholas Woodman just turned 40 and he's still sticking cameras in his mouth. In 2013, we featured the GoPro CEO in the magazine with photos of him chomping down on his pioneering action camera. More than two years later, Woodman is at it again, albeit with a smaller chew toy.

On Monday, GoPro unveiled a new camera, the Hero4 Session, a device that represents a significant departure in form factor from its past consumer electronics. Cube-like and half the size of GoPro's current Hero4 Black edition, the new camera is an attempt from the San Mateo, Calif. company to appeal to new customers and diversify its product offerings. While it's had an up-and-down first year as a public company, GoPro is hoping that the Session can reignite interest and show that the company can still innovate as it explores new business realms like virtual reality and drones.

FORBES caught up with Woodman shortly after GoPro announced the Session, which will start selling next week for $400 apiece. In a wide-ranging conversation, the billionaire tech executive spoke about the new product, why it will take some time to establish GoPro as a media company and why he doesn't fear
Apple.

The following has been edited for clarity and structure.

Forbes: Why did you guys decide to develop a completely new camera?

Nicholas Woodman: [Presses a button to turn on camera, records a video selfie and places it on the desk.] Just that ease of use right there is totally game-changing. A GoPro is convenient as is, but you still have to turn it on, wait for it to turn on, then hit the shutter. But if you’re running around chasing kids, or if you’re shooting a lot of start-stop videos, you’re either leaving your camera on--which can drain battery life--or you’re turning your camera on and off, which can be laborious.

Just being able to feel this depression and feel the button and hit it and record and save. It sounds super basic but when you spend an afternoon using it, it has you reaching for your GoPro more frequently because it’s just one more pain point removed.

F: But does this cannibalize your other product lines?

NW: It's more complementary. The way the product line is set, as long as a customer ends up choosing a GoPro, we’re happy. So if people were to buy more Sessions than [Hero4] Blacks or Silvers, we would have no issue would that.

I think it’s also going to be appealing to consumers who maybe have not understood GoPro—and they look at it and say, "Really I’m going to wear that?” Maybe it’s still a little too big, or maybe it’s not low profile enough. Or maybe they’re a little self-conscious of having a Hero4 Black or Silver on them, whereas if you’re self-conscious about this, then you’re just not in the market for a wearable camera because it’s tough to get any smaller or lower profile.

F: So you see this opening up your consumer base?

NW: Absolutely…It was important for us to broaden our lineup so that [our customer] could have more options. The Hero4 Black, Hero4 Silver, those are different shades of the same camera. They have the same ID more or less, so they’re speaking to—from a design perspective—the same consumer. If we’re not resonating with that consumer, we’re not offering them enough variety or enough choice.

F: Polaroid came out with a camera of a similar shape a year ago. How is this different?

This is a GoPro. This is the same engineering know-how that goes into Hero4 Black or Silver, just in a different form factor. There’s absolutely no comparison in quality.

We've worked on this for over three years. Long before anything like this was out... This is one of the best GoPros we’ve ever made. I don’t think the [Polaroid] Cube has faired too well.

F: I’m looking at this thing and you can probably stack a bunch of them. Maybe you can do a lot of things with VR?

That fits in your mouth way easier than other GoPros. You don’t have kids yet! If you’re a dad, you’ll get it. If you have two or three kids running around and one of them is about to kill himself and you don’t have a place to put the camera, you put it in your teeth and you can take a great video.

F: Speaking of kids, how durable is this camera?

NW: Dude, yeah, every single GoPro we make goes through the same testing. Price points don’t indicate strength or durability. The glass lens is fully removable, so if you hit it at the racetrack at Laguna Seca or something like that, you can replace the glass. It’s rated to 10 meters, or 33 feet, as waterproof. But it’s waterproof way deeper. It won’t leak. The failure that happens is that the pressure pushes in the button, and then your button is locked up. You could be at 100 feet and you camera is still recording but your button is locked up, which in Session’s case would shut it off.

One thing that is not obvious is how good the sound quality is. You go surfing and kayaking and do anything in the water and you can immediately muffle the sound.

We have a microphone on the back and a microphone on the front, and what’s awesome is that it will dynamically switch based on what is the least windy microphone [or what sounds better.] That means dramatically improved audio for high-wind sports like skiing and mountain biking, or putting it on your motorcycle or helmet.

F: Let's talk about your guys' media focus. Does this focus on new products mean you are guys are shifting away from the media business?

NW: No, this enables the media side of the business. What we always say is that this is going to happen in a series of events where our media opportunity comes from us enabling people to create and share content.

First we’re nailing it in capture. We’ve proven that. Now we’re developing our software, so that people can produce more compelling content. And then when we’re better at that, we’ll be able to scale GoPro as an entertainment business... We just need to make it easier for our customers to produce five, 10 times the amount of content that they are today, which shouldn’t be hard because it’s so difficult today. The fact that our customers are producing any content is amazing.

F: In terms of other product announcements is there anything to anticipate?

NW: You can anticipate a lot of things, we just can’t tell you what they are!... We’ve got a [quadcopter] coming out in the first half of next year.

To see what we’re doing now and what we’re accomplishing is amazing. Three years ago we had three people in product development at GoPro and we were working on how to get the next camera out. Now we’re developing multiple types of cameras. We’re getting into spherical arrays and flying machines, all while growing a global media brand that spawned from everyone’s adoption of our technology.

F: So you guys aren't having trouble pulling engineering talent?

It’s getting easier and easier. Sure, because we’re public and because there is financial opportunity, but for a lot of hires it’s because they want to work on something that is meaningful to them personally. You can imagine that GoPro is a popular product among the engineering community.

F: A lot is made of tech companies that retain their founders as CEOs as being more innovative and open to risk. I think of companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon that have been very successful in focusing on new businesses because of their CEOs.

NW: Well, I think even more important than the founder as a CEO is passion. That kind of goes hand-in-hand with the founder because it’s his or her baby. And you have that continual passion and enthusiasm. With a hired gun CEO, you run the risk of having someone who is less passionate.

Can you imagine how many other companies, and I won’t say names—companies that probably compete with us—where people go and it’s just a job for them?

NW: No, not at all. They’ve got their own vision. They’ve got their own fronts that they’re battling on and I think our businesses are very complimentary to one another, but I think they’re focused on enabling terrific capture on their smartphones.

I think there was this whole hubbub on this patent, which was a Kodak patent that was part of a portfolio of patents that Apple bought. They didn’t even know they bought it, and then this thing issues with their name on it and suddenly they’re developing a GoPro competitor. The patent wasn’t even for a camera. It was for a watch that had a button to control a GoPro-like camera. How that gets extrapolated into "Apple Is Developing a GoPro-Killer" is total headline nonsense.

That said I don’t know what Apple’s roadmap is. But I’ve spoken to [Apple CEO] Tim Cook and there’s zero reason to believe those guys are developing a GoPro competitor.

F: What about those headlines about giving away part of your company to your former housemate on a handshake deal? You seemed to get a lot of credit for that.

It’s this age where you get a lot of credit for doing the things you should do. The guy worked his butt off. It wasn’t like it was a handout. He was my partner. I started GoPro two years before I hired [Neil Dana]... He was looking for a job at the time and "I said 'Hey, come and help me out with a tradeshow'" because I was a one-man band.

He’s such a good salesman and he’s so high energy. I said, "Hey Neil why don’t you come work with me, let’s do this." I made a deal with him down the line that whatever I made I’d give him 10% of it. For years and years and years, we didn’t have any formal paperwork in place, it was just like a handshake. And then once we brought on investors three or four years ago, we made everything official and put it into practice.

So giving me credit for not taking him to court and trying to screw him out of it is a little bit like [smiles]—I appreciate it and it’s nice. But I’ll tell you, it feels a lot better to get that feedback than what I got with the Jill And Nicholas Woodman Foundation when we created our foundation and got kicked in the proverbials for that. So I appreciate that. But Neil earned it.